Open Minds, Closed Minds and Christianity

ISBN 9780958490733
In this controversial, leading edge book, author Colin Bower draws on the work of the great twentieth-century champion of freedom, Karl Popper and places Christianity four square within the totalitarian tradition that spawned the great collectivist aberrations of the twentieth-century: fascism, National Socialism, communism and racism. Christianity, says Bower, is the last of the “ghastly philosophies of collectivism” to blight the attempts of humanity to achieve prosperous, stable and free societies. He argues that the limits to human freedom cannot be explored nor extended whilst Christianity enslaves its adherents in superstition and insists on the pre-eminence of belief over evidence, belief even enrooted in Iron Age myth. If humanity were to re-engage with Christianity in the critical manner Bower suggests, its totalitarian character would become visibly evident, and freedom loving people would abandon it to the scrapheap of ideology.


The “war on terror” and the smouldering antagonisms in the Middle East rightly continue to provide reason for public debate on the place and value of religion in the modern world. This debate focuses on extremism in its many forms, and on religious fundamentalism. But in author Bower’s view, there is no meaningful distinction to be made between “fundamentalist” and any other type of religious adherence: he argues that religion is intrinsically fundamentalist, and no one should be surprised when it results in outrageous human behaviour. At a time when the prospect of peaceful, stable and prosperous societies is realistically in view, he argues that humanity must abandon its preference for belief over evidence that is the hallmark of religion.

His sights are in particular set on Christianity, a religion he understands better than other religions, largely because he was himself brought up in a conventional Christian tradition. But his arguments could be directed against any irrational belief system, and he denies that there is any benign form of superstition. Christianity, he says, undermines our responsibility, and it also inhibits our potential as free and sovereign individuals aspiring to build free societies. Christianity is therefore not objectionable simply because it offers a fairy tale view of life based on miracles and an untestable promise of bliss in the afterlife, but also – and more importantly - because it provides a rationale for behaviour that cannot be held to account in human institutions based on reason, on the primacy of evidence, and on the idea that truth is derived exclusively from human sources. If the human enterprise is to build free and open societies, based on truths argued for and generated in the living laboratory of human experience, then Christianity represents a barrier to that enterprise, and notwithstanding the beauty of little grey stone churches standing in country meadows, it must go, he says.

Little grey stone churches in country meadows? Yes, of course they are beautiful, as are the hymns that are sung in them, the rituals played out in their shadows, and the friendships that form in their congregations. But their existence is drawn from roots which grow deeply into myth and belief which, Bower argues, is profoundly totalitarian. It behoves us all, in his view, to find peace, harmony and beauty in other areas of our lives, for the price paid for a little Christian peace, harmony and beauty is too high. It is bought at the cost of self-imposed ignorance and – regrettably - of bigotry. Bower is at pains to insist that his attack is mounted against Christianity the belief system, not at the people who subscribe to it. It is one of the ironies of life, he suggests, that good Christians are often the living contradiction of the religion they ostensibly espouse.

Open Minds draws its critical framework from Karl Popper, who wrote his great manifesto, The Open Society and its Enemies in the middle of the last century. Using this framework, he analyses the early church, and with the help of other distinguished authors such as Charles Freeman, he shows that the birth of Christianity was not only totalitarian, but inevitably totalitarian. He then traces the thread of that totalitarianism through the writings of the Bible, and through Christian theology. He debunks the notion of a unique Christian morality, chastises as infantile discussion around the realistic possibility of the existence of god, finds the chilling presence of human sacrifice as a core but covert element in the crucifixion of Jesus, hold the church accountable for damaging the human sexual consciousness, and points out that anti-Semitism is hard-wired into Christianity. Finally, he offers a short vision of a post-Christian world.

Colin Bower, 55, lives and works in Cape Town. He has been in book publishing for the past 18 years, and prior to that was a journalist and a public relations consultant. For a short period he lectured in English at the University of Cape Town. He is currently a business consultant and a freelance writer. Click here to be directed to Colin's website.


  • Title: Open Minds, Closed Minds and Christianity
  • Author: Colin Bower
  • ISBN: 10: 0958490732 13: 9780958490733
  • Book specifications: Soft cover, 240 x 168 mm, 320 pages
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Customer Reviews


The great current global apostasy does nothing to shake the Christian's faith - it actually strengthens it. It's nothing new or unexpected but was prophesied millennia ago. 2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; This book is one more piece of evidence of the prophesied "falling away" (apostasy), a sure sign of the eminent appearance of the Antichrist, followed by the Second Coming and Judgement of the world by Jesus Christ.

Just find this gem. Can't wait to get beyond the introduction which itself speaks volumes. Well Done Aardvark Press for publishing a contentious subject that so desperately needs exposure in this dangerously unreasonable world.

I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed your book. It has been read from cover to cover at least 3 times, bookmarked to death and is now dog eared and next to my bed for constant enlightment and enjoyment. It is a wonderful, critical, humorous (in as much as one has to laugh at the absurdity of the entirety of religious belief systems), insightful, enlightening - I could go on. I give it to everyone I know. Thank you. Please don't stop here! Belinda

i feel very sorry for the auther [sic] and will pray for him. (Anon.)

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